Sometimes a story gets stuck. That sucks, because we’re the ones who drove into the tree, but it happens. (This is not a post about that.) When the story is fine but the writer is stuck, that’s different. That’s a mental thing, or an organization thing, or whatever, but if you are stuck and […]
Tag: better writing
Pushing that PUBLISH button is a big moment, and your life is different – for better or worse – from that moment on. Writers need to get over the fear of publishing. I was lucky, I started by writing family humor essays and my stuff was out there for a years on Facebook […]
BLACK FRIDAY TWO-SENTENCE STORY CHALLENGE Flash fiction is supposed to be short and fast, and it doesn’t get much faster than two sentences! But it’s a holiday weekend here so I wanted to make this fun. (I saw this on CS Wilde’s blog and LOVED the idea. I spent longer thinking about my two sentence […]
If you wrote a book and published it, congratulations! You’re a small business owner, and entrepreneur. A budding capitalist. You write your product. That’s cool! Then, you sell your product. So… you’re a salesperson. Ugh. Most of you NEVER wanted to be salespeople. Your book/books are your business, and […]
I expected to get a ton of writing done at Christmas last year. NOTHING got done! NOTHING!!! Writer’s slump? Maybe. Don’t you HATE it when the words aren’t flowing, or you can’t get motivated to write? Or other writing related hurdles? The thing is, it passes. Think […]
Occasionally a new author will write me with a question or problem and I’ll answer it here so we can all learn. Dear Dan, I went to a writers’ conference last weekend (which was kind of intimidating) but I learned a lot about writing technique and learned some things about myself. I’m not a […]
I remember reading A Tale Of Two Cities in school and being partly fascinated with it. I don’t pretend I grasped the complexities of the novel at that age, maybe eighth grade or freshman year in high school, but I remember it read a lot like a soap opera – and our teacher informed us […]
We all occasionally reach a spot in the story where we don’t know what to do, how to get the characters past a certain obstacle. If it lasts a while, people call it writer’s block. So don’t let it last. In Poggibonsi, the tricky spot was trying to think up a way for Mike’s wife to […]
Occasionally a writer reaches out and laments about a writerly problem. Here’s one I received recently that I think is fairly common. . Dear Dan, I recently realized that my writing has slowed to a standstill, not because I’m busy, but because I’m terrified to finish. Help. Scared Storyteller . Dear Storyteller, It’s not uncommon […]
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FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE: PLOT POINT
If you wanna get right to the challenge skip down to “FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE!” and champagne Leo. . As most of you know, plots are either very easy or very hard. You take a trip to Italy and see a girl on a train? Bingo! Three months and 100,000 words later you’ve written a Pulitzer […]
DAN ALATORRE 